Environmental Peacebuilding in Myanmar

Unfinished Business

Complex challenges often demand to find innovative solutions. University of New England (UNE) researchers and their international collaborative partners are engaging on important challenges and are making a positive impact on the environment, health, society, culture, public policy, and the quality of life in neighbouring communities.

UNE’s latest research stories

Professor Ian Metcalfe from UNE’s Palaeoscience Research Centre is a world authority on the geological and tectonic evolution of Asia. ‘East and Southeast Asia are located at the zone of plate tectonic convergence between the Eurasian, Indo-Australian and Philippine/Pacific Plates where catastrophic volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis are still generated today by subduction and collision processes’.

It’s hard to imagine two more different places: the Flinders Ranges in outback South Australia, and the Qinling Mountains in the southern Shaanxi Province in central China. In terms of landscape and climate they are poles apart, to say nothing of the culture and language.

Dr Dambaru Ballav Subedi returned to academia after working for more than ten years in peacebuilding, violence prevention, and development throughout South and Southeast Asia, in places such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. Dr Subedi’s doctoral research examines the ideological radicalisation of Maoist combatants and how they could be rehabilitated and reintegrated back into communities in Nepal.

Dr Phuntsho Thinley investigates the role of large apex mammalian predators – specifically the tiger (Panthera tigris) and the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) – in catchment hydrology and climate change adaptation, with respect to sustaining freshwater supply. UNE’s world-leading research cluster in wildlife ecology, aquatic ecology and water management provides Dr Thinley with the best context to pursue this.

The research team has since discovered that the use of the site started in the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000 BCE) and continued through four millennia into the early Islamic period, and has documented major changes in site use and human life style.

Latest stories from our graduate researchers

Dr. Johanna Garnett, who recently completed her doctoral research at UNE on the conflict in Myanmar, found that the conflict was linked to the historical clash between authority and democracy, and is fundamentally a conflict between environmental quality and economic development. Researcher: Dr Johanna Garnett, School of Humanities Australians are not all that familiar with…

Research at UNE

Research+

Set in Armidale in northern New South Wales, UNE promotes and supports a network of researchers — both staff and students — who are seeking solutions to complex national and international problems. Although the scope of our research is broad, we have a particular expertise and focus on regional and rural communities and environments.